Japan’s return poses questions for an old ally

H
enry Scott Stokes
was once the Tokyo correspondent for a trifecta of global ­newspapers – The Times, the Financial Times and The New York Times – but he is better known these days for reimagining the Pacific War.

It says a lot a about the sudden appetite for revisionist history in the bookshops of Japan that a semi-retired foreigner has sold more than 100,000 copies of a book which describes wartime comfort women as ­high-class prostitutes.

“In the past Japan would have got all uptight and upset about tensions with China and South Korea. Now they just sort of shrug their shoulders. Japan is back. We were just lucky with the timing of the book," Stokes says in an interview at his long-time haunt in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

The post-Pacific War military alliance and symbiotic economic relationship between the US and Japan remains the bedrock of stability in Asia, but there is now little disguised questioning on both sides about the degree of commitment by the other side. Some Japanese officials feel the US pays too much heed to its long-term relationship with China and has demonstrated a lack of resolve in Syria and Ukraine. Some US officials feel Japan is fuelling historic grievances with China and South Korea at the risk of military conflict and intra-alliance tension.

His visit to the Yasukuni Shrine – which honours among others several convicted war criminals and contains a high-profile revisionist museum – last December prompted an unusual public expression of disappointment from the Obama administration and exposed the ­potential quicksand for this week’s visit. Abe only added to this tension by sending an offering to the shrine on Monday.

But Japanese political analysts are increasingly divided over whether these outbursts reveal a country spoiling for a military clash with China or simply a country shifting from its “American interlude" to being a more normal participant in regional affairs.

As a result Michishita estimates that the Japanese population now roughly splits into isolationists at 50 per cent, internationalists at 20 per cent and nationalists at 20 per cent. But he says the political elite is more polarised about the path ahead with ­isolationists at only 30 per cent, but internationalists at 40 per cent and nationalists at 30 per cent.

Balancing internationalism with nationalism

And to underline the complexity of the transition under way he says that Abe should be viewed as an internationalist ­politician but a nationalist person. However to keep his government in power he has to woo nationalists in order to maintain a ­winning coalition to implement his inter­nationally oriented economic reforms.

But Michishita says Abe’s visit to ­Yasukuni – which appeals to nationalists – “has cast doubt upon his ability to be ­pragmatic and sensible in foreign and ­security policy". As a result it has made it ­difficult for the US leaders to embrace his more “proactive" defence policies including revising the Constitution to allow Japan to take part in collective self-defence activities with a country such as Australia.

Sophia University political scientist Koichi Nakano says Obama’s visit is unusual because Japan has insisted on it being a ­top-level State visit even though there was uncertainty until the end about what would actually be publicly achieved on both trade and security matters.

“Both sides have an interest in playing up the closeness of the relationship," he says. “But there is a lack of trust on both sides."

He says that at the basic level the conservative LDP and the centre-left Obama Administration have failed to build the personal bonds that have existed in the past, mostly during US Republican administrations.

But the US has previously turned a blind eye to the rise of more hardline nationalist policies because the economic relationship was positive, Japan supported US in the ­Middle East and the last long-serving prime minister
Junichiro Koizumi
was seen as a pragmatist even though he also visited the Yasukuni Shrine and upset China.

“Japan didn’t just shift to the right because Abe came to power. It’s much deeper than that. But deep down he really believes these revisionist views of history, unlike Koizumi.

“The difference now is that the relative weight of China and Japan in US eyes has changed and the US needs to rethink its strategy. It can’t be as relaxed as it once was about Japanese nationalism." Meanwhile in Japan, Nakano says conservatives have been happy to support various US foreign policies because they felt they then had the freedom to pursue their domestic cultural agenda.

But another speaker, who supports a more active Japanese foreign policy, acknowledged that: “This makes our ­American friends a little bit ambivalent. They don’t want to get entrapped in bilateral tension between Japan and China."

But in a sign of the times some well-connected security analysts said they were ­confident Japan’s self-defence forces would defeat China in a maritime boundary ­military clash within about five hours.

But some who hold this view say that any such short-term victory will only increase the risks for Japan in its relationship with China in the future.